Slither (25 page)

Loren daintily cut some more. "Plus gill sacs connected to the secondary dorsomentral channels. So we
were right again. It can breathe air and also process
oxygen when it's in seawater. Like lungworms and
snakeheads. And it's definitely not a Polychaeta." He
pushed the microscope over to Nora, frustrated. "I
can't even guess what the family is on this thing."

Nora changed the numerical aperture and upped the
light field. With microshears and a teasing needle, she
peeled back the layers of the worm's coelum-its outer
musculature that served as skin as well as the main
sensory organ carrier. "This looks like a roundworm
but demonstrates features of other nematodes and an nelids. No evidence of triphasic rhythm fibers. Part
land rover, part free-range seaworm, but the outer
physicality smacks of what we thought last night.
Roundworms. Pink from oxygen saturation-"

"The Trichinella family."

"Um-hmm, and that's impossible because no
Trichinella, nor Trichina, exists without triphasic
rhythm."

Loren laughed, if a bit nervously. "When we discover
a new species of worm, we sure do pick doozies."

Nora wasn't laughing. "Plus motile ova, plus chitinpenetrating digestive enzymes." She didn't say anything
more, but jacked the microscope to its full 400x magnification. "Damn, what I wouldn't give for an SEM, or
even just a scope that cranked to a thousand or fifteen
hundred."

"Tell me about it."

Nora went silent again, then slid the scope back to
Loren. "Tell me what you see."

Loren looked. "Muscular symmetry that looks both
radial and spiral," he declared.

They both sat a minute, saying nothing. Only experts
of their kind knew the ramifications. "This can only
mean its motile ova are bifunctional. A mutator.
Like-"

"Like a fair share of Trichinosis species. And if we're
right, then these things can easily infect humans ...
I'm going to check the midlevel striations now." He cut
some more, then said, "My hands are full. Get something to gently raise the stage clip, will you?"

The kit lay on the other side of Loren, so Nora
looked around for a pen or something small to lift the
clip. Damn ... There was nothing near her. She
slipped her finger in the key pocket of her swimsuit,
but the only thing in it was that small, corded metal strip she'd found the other day. This'll have to do, she
thought, and used it to raise the stage clip.

"What's that thing?" Loren asked, obviously seeing
it under magnification.

"Something I stepped on in the woods. Not sure
what it is. Trent said he thinks it's a calibration tool for
an old army radio."

"It's got some funny markings on it," Loren told her.
"Okay, thanks. Lower the clip now."

Funny markings? She took the metal strip away and
decided to look at it under the other microscope.
"You're right," she said, focusing. "What are those
markings?"

"They're raised, like Braille almost," Loren said back
while still concentrating on the next incision. "Reminded me more of a bar code or something. Trent said
it was a radio tool?"

"Yeah. But he wasn't certain."

"Looks more like a key to me."

"That's what I thought too," she murmured, and
looked more closely at the object beneath the magnifier.

The markings looked like this:

"Forget about that thing," Loren said next. "I just
found the stomach process and the enzymatic sac."

"Did you puncture it?"

"Yeah, and guess what? The fluid is sizzling. It's
even smoking a little."

The chitin penetrator," Nora said.

Then Loren said, "Holy shit. It's not burning the
glass slide, but the stuff melted the tip of my probe."

"Is the probe tip made of resin?"

"No. Stainless steel."

"Strong stuff," Nora commented. But this wasn't terribly surprising. There were a number of invertebrates
that possessed highly corrosive stomach enzymes: to
burn through the shells of animals they were attacking,
and to even burn burrows into coral. "Remember that
article we read about the Norwegian lugworm? It released its enzymes all at once and burned a hole
through the aquarium's slate floor."

"Yeah, slate, but not steel. This is really tough stuff,
Nora."

She could see threads of smoke rising up from
Loren's microscope slide. "Can you drip some onto the
floor?"

With larger forceps, he kept the dead worm crimped
to the slide, then lifted it all off the stage. Careful not
to dribble any on his fingers, he tipped the slide. Several drops of the brownish fluid plipped onto the concrete floor.

Threads of smoke began to rise.

"Jesus," Nora said. She grabbed another probe and
ran it across the smoking drops. "This stuff is really
tough. It's burned some small indentations into the cement."

"We'll have to be very careful getting some more
of these things to take back to the college," Loren
said.

"I wonder what the preferred habitat is. Water or
land?"

"Probably water. Something that gets this big isn't
going to settle for beetles and bugs to eat. It'll go after
larger crustaceans, the bigger meal ticket."

Like the lobster, she recalled. "When you're out
looking for more bristleworms with Annabelle, keep an
eye out for more of these. It'd be great to get some live
ones to take back."

"I'll find some." Loren felt sure. "And speaking of
that, I better start getting ready. Annabelle will probably want to start the next shoot soon."

`See Spot run," Nora said. "And don't forget our
bet."

"Oh, I won't. You'll drop big money when you lose
that one," Loren said. Then he winked and left.

Poor fool, Nora thought. The ignorance of youth.

She continued dissecting the worm ... and continued to find physical features that seemed to borrow
from several different species: epidermal pores to draw
in oxygen from the air-like an earthworm-but also
gill filters for water breathing-around intercoelic
channels that stored seawater-like free-ranging Polychaetes. Ovaries that produced independent motile ova
were possessed of many roundworm species-like the
Trichinella classes-while the worm's physical appearance, too, looked like some of the nonmarine orders of
Trichinella and Trichina.

On its own, though, Nora knew that the specimen
could not be any of those.

Almost like a genetic hybrid, her mind whispered.

When she'd dissected all she could, she jarred the
worm in preservatives and spent the next hour inputting notes into her laptop. That's when Trent
walked in.

"Going for a swim?" Nora asked, for the lieutenant
was wearing trunks and an olive-drab army T-shirt.

"Yeah, I might as well," he replied. "I've been stationed in Florida for the last ten years, but I don't
think I've even been to the beach more than a few
times. I thought I'd tag along with Annabelle and
Loren, while they're looking for their scarlet bristleworms."

"Have fun."

"But I wanted to show you this first." He approached
the table and handed her something. "Is that like the
thing you mentioned?"

Nora placed it in her palm and knew at once. "The
little camera lens, yeah. The one I saw was stuck in a
tree, almost like it had been nailed into the bark."

"Same thing here, but I pried this one out. Originally
I thought it must've been an electric-eye sensor, or
maybe an infrared perimeter alarm, but I don't see any
terminals on it."

"I didn't see any on the one I saw either. No connection posts or anything to hook wires to. When the
army was using these things, how did they establish a
circuit?"

"Beats me. But there does seem to be glass in the
head, like a lens."

"I know," she said next. "Let me take a closer
look ..."

She placed the cigarette-butt-sized object on the microscope stage, then focused down.

"Yes, it's definitely rounded, polished glass. A bulb,
maybe, an indicator light?"

"Can't imagine that. In the woods? And what would
the power source be? See any terminals on it, or anything like a hole for wires to go in?"

Nora studied the odd cylinder more closely. "Nothing on the sides or on the butt end."

"See if there's any markings on it. I'll bet there's a defense contractor's name on it somewhere, or an army
property line," Trent said.

Nora slowly revolved the object on the stage with
forceps. "Wait a minute." She paused. "There is something."

"What's it say?"

Nora rubbed her eyes and got up. She bid Trent to
sit. "Tell me if you've ever seen that before."

Trent sat down and put his eye to the scope.

What Nora had seen was oddly familiar. Etched
along the object's side were markings like this:

Annabelle stretched her bare legs to the sun. The tan was
deepening, made more prominent by a blazing white
thong bikini. She glanced down at herself and immediately thought, Lookin' good, Annabelle-as always.

She wanted to catch a few more rays before she and
Loren went back in the water for the last of the bristleworm photos. He'll be here soon, she figured, so she
took off her top, to let herself be "caught." The sudden
sun seemed to lick her nipples, raising them in the heat.
She wanted to keep Loren stoked: Sexual anxiety
among the men in her range always kept things interesting. Poor little Loren. He'll have blue balls for years....

-Her bare breasts looked like fresh white fruit atop the
nougat tan of her belly. She lounged back on her towel.
The narrow beach extended off, gentle waves flapping
over each other as seagulls glided silently overhead.

Her snorkeling and photo gear lay beside her. The sun was heating her up. Might as well make some calls
while I'm just lying around. She couldn't wait to tell
her friends about this little expedition. When she opened
her cell phone she noticed that her fianck had left several messages. Better to let him wait, she decided. She
liked to let him stew; it kept him wondering. He needs
to appreciate me more .. .

She called her best girlfriend in New York and got to
chatting. "The funniest thing of all is how dumb these
people are," she was saying. "None of them know I'm a
newbie; I've got them believing I'm the magazine's premier nature photographer-they don't know this is
only my third assigrunent. The idiots think I've been all
over the world!"

More chatter.

"Well, of course! There's this army guy here, nothing
to write home about but he's good for some diversion. I
wouldn't pay him the time of day back home, but on this
island? Why not? And, no, I don't consider it cheating
at all-strictly recreational. What I do is my business.
Shit, my fianck's the lucky one. What he doesn't know
won't hurt him." Then she giggled. "But I better never
catch him cheating on me! What I'd do to him would
make Lorena Bobbit look like Shirley Fucking Temple."

Still more chick-thing chatter.

"Oh, and you wouldn't believe the damn professorshe's a worm professor, can you believe it?-this skinny
frizz-head cunt with permanent PMS. Looks like Olive
Oil on Popeye. I'm playing so many head games with
her, it's actually fun, and I'll bet she's never been laid in
her life! She's so jealous of my bod that you can see
steam coming out her ears. Oh, and she's got this dork
assistant named Loren-nerd and a half. I'm always
giving him an eyeful to keep him riled. That poor kid
probably plays with himself ten times a day! When I'm
bored, I tease the shit out of him. It's so much fun!"

Suddenly the line fell silent, and after a moment, all
she could hear was fuzz.

I knew I shouldn't have changed my service. She
leaned up, frowning, and redialed.

Nothing but fuzz over the line.

Then she dialed her fiance.

Fuzz.

"Goddamn cell phones," she muttered and put it
away.

"Are those numbers that have just worn away from
age?" Nora suggested.